Cathie Wood: AI Will Drive the Next New Wave of Innovation

Cathie Wood believes a convergence of technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, is creating transformative investment opportunities across multiple sectors despite current market uncertainty.

During a webinar hosted by UK investment platform InvestEngine Thursday, the ARK Invest CEO and chief investment officer outlined how AI is accelerating innovation across healthcare, autonomous driving and software development while fundamentally changing economic growth expectations for the next five years.

According to Wood, “Artificial intelligence is the biggest catalyst for change out there,” describing how AI will affect every technology and accelerate innovation across sectors.

The investment strategist highlighted how her firm’s analysts are organized around these technologies rather than traditional sectors, allowing them to identify opportunities that span multiple industries.

AI is transforming key areas like autonomous driving, where Wood believes Tesla Inc.’s (TSLA) robotaxis will reach a critical safety milestone this year.

“By the end of this year, we believe, thanks to AI, that robotaxis, or at least Tesla’s robotaxi, will be safer than a human driver,” Wood stated, noting that Tesla is approaching the safety threshold of one accident per 700,000 miles currently achieved by human drivers.

This safety improvement, combined with regulatory changes that Wood anticipates under the current administration, could accelerate the adoption of autonomous driving technology and transform transportation economics.

“The ultimate price at scale … when a fully global robotaxi network is scaled out, will be 25 cents per mile compared to that $2 to $4 per mile” currently charged by rideshare services, Wood explained.

The transformative impact of AI on healthcare was another focus, particularly in drug discovery where companies like Recursion Therapeutics Inc. (RXRX) have seen researcher productivity increase tenfold in just one year, according to Wood.

“The number of hypotheses a researcher could test at Recursion Therapeutics has gone from 20 per year to 200 per year,” she said, adding that the timeline to develop drugs could shrink from 13 years to eight years while costs drop from $2.4 billion to $600 million per drug.

Beyond near-term market volatility, Wood maintains an optimistic outlook with a vision of accelerated economic growth driven by converging technologies.

“Over the next five years, we would expect that [GDP] growth rate to more than double, based on the convergence of technologies,” Wood predicted, citing the historical precedent of technological breakthroughs leading to step-function increases in economic growth.